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address and lessons to be learned. While a collaborative project which has many participants, like iSAC6, may be viewed as an success, as will be described later, this may not be the viewpoint of all participants, some of whom may have left the project before its conclusion, or found that the hoped for benefits have not been realised. For these participants the project is at best a limited success, but for many it is a failure with an investment of funds, people and commitment failing to deliver any return.( EUROPEAN COURT OF AUDITORS, 2011) It is a scenario which is common in EU funded research projects, but which has also been the subject of comment in studies of projects elsewhere in both developed and developing economies.( Grant Thornton, 2011)
The analysis will first look at the characteristics peculiar to e‐Government projects and discuss how these pose risks and present challenges not usually faced in other IT projects. We will then focus in particular on the individual participant perspective during the initial phases of the project and look for any relationship between this starting point and eventual success or failure.
2. Features of e‐Government projects
Government organisations at all levels seek change: operationally in terms of the effectiveness, efficiency, scope, quality and cost of the services they provide; and strategically in terms of working practices, organisational culture and relationship with stakeholders. For approximately the last 10‐15 years the focus of change has been on research into, and implementation of, e‐Government initiatives. E‐Government itself has come to include a wide range of initiatives and functions. It emerged alongside the Dot Com boom of the 1990s, growing rapidly from early use of the internet to disseminate public information and undertake public consultations developing in concept to include almost any IT supported public sector business process( Heeks, 2006). A thorough and highly informative analysis of the whole realm of e‐Government, including a selection of scoping definitions, can be found in the report of the eGovRTD2020 project( Codagnone & Wimmer, 2007). The range and size of e‐Government is important for this discussion as it indicates a level of scope and complexity not generally evident in the private sector and thus perhaps indicates the need for different attitudes towards management and judgement of success or failure. In their case study comparison Melin and Axelsson ably demonstrate the challenges of e‐Government project management in a complex interorganisational environment( Melin & Axelsson, 2009), while the Grant and Jordan consultancy report discussing strategy in the complexity of the Public Sector highlight three key features of relevance to this paper: multiple and potentially conflicting goals; the range of stakeholders; and unpredictability( Grant & Jordan, 2012). We will see all three of these features having an impact on some of the iSAC6 participants.
Perhaps the best known and most widely publicised feature of e‐Government projects is their propensity for failure.
In Special Report 9 / 2011 the European Court of Auditors observed that:
“ The needs of citizens, businesses and administration were not determined in advance and strategic objectives were too general and lacked specific targets. There was insufficient analysis of what was actually required.”( EUROPEAN COURT OF AUDITORS, 2011)
The Auditors concluded that the absence of clear, quantifiable objectives was a significant contributor to the failure of ERDF e‐Government projects to meet needs and deliver value. Many other studies have highlighted the problems faced by e‐Government projects and the frequency with which they fail to deliver the desired benefits. In her analysis of e‐Government project failure, Carolyne Stainforth quotes recent studies which“ suggest between 60 to 80 % of e‐Government projects fail in some way”( Stainforth, 2010). The UK National Audit Office, the statutory authority that reports to Parliament on the efficiency and effectiveness of resource deployment by government departments, estimate that 34 government IT projects“ have a delivery confidence rating of‘ red’ or‘ amber / red”, that is they are not expected to deliver the benefits expected of them. Most of these projects fall within the broad description of e‐Government. In North America, according to a report from Grant Thornton,“ USA( ranked 2nd in the United Nations Global E‐Government Survey 2010), has spent about 600 bn USD in the previous 10 years, only to realize that the returns / benefits are far below the intended / expected benefits from large scale e‐Government programmes.”( Grant Thornton, 2011). The problem is a global one, not just limited to the mature democracies and developed economies of Europe and North America. There are papers discussing the problems of e‐Government project failure in the Middle East( Al‐Rashid, 2010), China( Janowski, et al., 2007), Egypt( Abdelsalam, et al., n. d.), US and Canada( Longford, 2002).
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